Robert McNamara: Public Enemy

Joe Galloway and I have had several discussions about Robert McNamara and his role in Vietnam. Joe has long said that there is a special place reserved in hell for Robert McNamara. As a Christian, I don’t wish any man or woman that but I do share most of Joe’s sentiments about McNamara.

By Joe Galloway

“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.” —Clarence Darrow (1857–1938)

Well, the aptly named Robert Strange McNamara has finally shuffled off to join LBJ and Dick Nixon in the 7th level of Hell.

McNamara was the original bean-counter — a man who knew the cost of everything but the worth of nothing.

Back in 1990 I had a series of strange phone conversations with McMamara while doing research for my book We Were Soldiers Once And Young. McNamara prefaced every conversation with this: “I do not want to comment on the record for fear that I might distort history in the process.” Then he would proceed to talk for an hour, doing precisely that with answers that were disingenuous in the extreme — when they were not bald-faced lies.

Upon hanging up I would call Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam and run McNamara’s comments past them for deconstruction and the addition of the truth.

The only disagreement i ever had with Dave Halberstam was over the question of which of us hated him the most. In retrospect, it was Halberstam.

When McNamara published his first book — filled with those distortions of history — Halberstam, at his own expense, set out on a journey following McNamara on his book tour around America as a one-man truth squad.

McNamara abandoned the tour.

The most bizarre incident involving McNamara occurred when he was president of the World Bank and, off on his summer holiday, he caught the Martha’s Vineyard ferry. It was a night crossing in bad weather. McNamara was in the salon, drink in hand, schmoozing with fellow passengers. On the deck outside a vineyard local, a hippie artist, glanced through the window and did a double-take. The artist was outraged to see McNamara, whom he viewed as a war criminal, so enjoying himself.

He immediately opened the door and told McNamara there was a radiophone call for him on the bridge. McNamara set down his drink and stepped outside. The artist immediately grabbed him, wrestled him to the railing and pushed him over the side. McNamara managed to get his fingers through the holes in the metal plate that ran from the top of the railing to the scuppers.

McNamara was screaming bloody murder; the artist was prying his fingers loose one at a time. Someone heard the racket and raced out and pulled the artist off.

By the time the ferry docked in the vineyard McNamara had decided against filing charges against the artist, and he was freed and walked away.

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I noticed the news on the Internet this AM and just finished listening to Terry Gross’ 1995 interview with RSM as well as her interview with Errol Morris after his documentary film “The Fog of War” was released. Morris described RSM as a control freak in the interview process.

I can’t help but wish my friend Jack could have lived to see this day, not to celebrate, but to see that even those masters of the lives of so many others ultimately breathe their last as well. And if Jack were still here, I’d play him the Tom Waits song “Mule”, something his Arkansas hill country blood would resonate to:

“Well the rampaging sons of the widow James, Jack the cutter and the pock-marked kid….Had to stand naked at the bottom of the cross….And tell the good Lord what they did….Tell the good Lord what they did….They got to get behind the Mule in the mornin’ and plow….They to get behind the Mule in the mornin’ and plow….”